In recent years, online multi-player services for video games have exploded in popularity. For example, the popular XBOX LIVE® service made available by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. allows gamers anywhere in the world to play with and against each other. Other online multi-player services presently include the PLAYSTATION NETWORK® service made available by Sony Corporation of America of Inglewood, Calif. and the WIICONNECT24® service made available by Nintendo of America Corporation of Redmond, Wash.
Allowing untrusted games to connect to such services has been a problem because it is extremely difficult to prevent cheating and denial-of-service attacks on the part of the users of the untrusted games, as well as prevent those untrusted games from access to special features of the service for which being trusted is a necessity. As a result, many online multi-player services have required that all games that connect to it be trusted. This in turn presents problems because the process of validating games as trusted is costly, so many smaller games are excluded from participation. Users would still like to play these smaller games via an online multi-player gaming service. Hence, there is a need to allow an untrusted computerized gaming system to use an online multi-player gaming service that requires games to be trusted.